This is a what my family prepared dough in about 100 years ago. It still has the old nails in it. It is in a sense a trough that the flour was put in with the warm water. My grandparents sold their house in Sweden and brought stufff back here to the states. My grandmother asked if I could make a lid for it so she could store things in it.

I have made the top out of spruce, and asked her if she wanted it to look like the trough or if it was to stay the same. It does not matter to her. She said in Swedish to let my art speak. Art? (I should probably give it to somebody who isn’t stunted in brain material as much as I am). Now as minuscule as my skill is as a woodworker, my finishing is probably worse than the most blind of gorillas. I was wondering how you guys would match the shade and/or distress it a little? Or would you leave it natural? She does not want the trough to be finished or sanded.

of any sort.

Any help would be great. Thanks in advance.

-- Just trying to build something beautiful

18 replies so far

I just did a project where the wife wanted some pine to look old and rustic. I used handplanes, against the grain, and in random spots, the complete opposite way they are intended to be used. The finish was one coat of amber shellac and some medium brown dye stain followed with poly and wax. It was very much trial and error but in the end, she loved it.

Amber shellac – 1-2 Lbs cut … I used flakes mixed with denatured alcohol but im sure you could use a thinned down Zinsser SealCoat. Typically that’s a 3 lbs cut. I let that set up for about 15 minutes then sanded it back lightly with 220. I wiped this on but if I had to do it again I would have sprayed or brushed it.

Then I used General Finished Medium Brown Dye Stain. Using a rag id wipe it on in small sections and quickly wipe it back off. I did like 3’ (ish) sections. I let that finish set up for a day or 2 then I came back and used a couple (2) coats of wipe on poly.

Now theres a bit of a fuax pas in there. The dye stain is oil based and the poly is water based. So if the dye stain isn’t totally cured you’ll have irregular spots and not a dead smooth flat finish. Luckily it didn’t matter to me on this project but just kinda fyi.

I forgot to add that I finished the sets of doors at different times and forgot my finishing schedule lol. I used 2 coats of shellac on the second set and they came out waaaayyyy lighter. That may be the ticket for you to keep that lighter tone. I had to completely plane it back off and start over again as it was much lighter than the other set.

I once built an end table to match some outside furniture for a friend. His chairs were all weathered and nicked up. So to give it an old look I took a chain and beat the table to make it look like it was nicked up too. He let mother nature due the rest. Hope that helps some.

-- Dave, Downers Grove, Il. -------- When you run out of ideas, start building your dreams.

This was a total accadent. I bought some 8/4 oak, it sat outside, lost inerest in the project, long and short is the wood ended up in the compost pile then about 6 months later a friend asked me to make an aged table. I unburried the wood dusted it off (well it was a really good cleaning that took about 2 hours) and went to work. The photos does not show it really well but it came out looking pretty aged.

Rosemaling, Norwegian painting on a Swedish made thing????!?! My family is rolling in their graves. Just kidding we do it too, but just better. Good idea though, it’s just find someone who can do it is the problem

LOL!!!! Mycket Tacksam Mike. That’s something to think about. My wife is Norwegian so I make those remarks to her to, which earns me some great remarks back. Thanks. People don’t understand the whole Swedish/Norwegian friendly rivalry unless you are one or the other.

I just did this with a lathe stand – making the bottom brace match the top. I took a length of small chain, like a swing set chain and put a couple small different types of bolts with nuts on them (some were wing nuts) threw the chain. Then used it to mark up the board by hitting it. Some light hits, some heavy hits. Also used the edge of a claw hammer in a couple places and even used a board with nails punched through it and hit it with the pointy end.

To tint it I drizzled tung oil into the new imperfections and then lightly coated the whole piece. After that, while it’s still wet (Disclaimer Don’t try this at home) I lightly took a plumbers torch to it. If it’s still wet it will catch the tung oil on fire (not a big explosive fire) and not enough to burn the wood, but it will give it that old dried out look.

If you want after that you can hit a few spots with sand paper to give you a few light spots.

I would do this on a test piece first.

It is against everything an anal retentive woodworker stands for but the end result is pretty cool